How do you define 'best' by money spent or results achieved?

Realtor Warren Reynolds does the analysis on the Boston Magazine school rankings to summarizes that the methodology "penalizes Franklin."

"For its 2015 school rankings, Boston Magazine says it chose a methodology that lessens the importance of academic performance (as measured by standardized test scores). Instead, in a self-described effort to reward school districts that spend more money, Boston Magazine says its calculations intentionally favor districts with high costs per pupil, small class sizes and high teacher to pupil ratios:

“. . .we rewarded schools that have smaller class sizes, lower student-to-teacher ratios, and higher rates of per-pupil spending, among other characteristics. In response to criticism of such rankings, we’ve also tried to deemphasize test results. We still take standardized test scores into account—but we reduced the weight of those scores within the overall rankings.”

This “spending over academic performance” weighting seems to have penalized Franklin in Boston Magazine’s analysis. Franklin schools are known for achieving solid test results while spending LESS per pupil than many other top performing school districts in the Commonwealth. The Franklin School District’s limited budget helps keeps Franklin’s real estate taxes a lot lower than most other communities in MA that have good schools, but that seems to count for little in the eyes of Boston Magazine."

screen grab of 02038.com

Continue reading Warren's article here:
http://02038.com/2015/09/boston-magazine-rankings-penalize-franklin/

So for good school performance with less out of your pocketbook, chose Franklin!